


A Black family wedding

by Heather



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, Flashback, Incest, Pre-Canon, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-28
Updated: 2007-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather





	A Black family wedding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rinsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=rinsbane).



  
_Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, London--April 28th, 1975_

Andromeda Black is on her third champagne already. Perhaps this event will be easier to manage when slightly tipsy.

The nightmare's been going on for hours now. She spent her morning being laced into brand new, lurid pink dress robes. She refuses to believe they were chosen for any reason other than to make her look as hideous as possible, in order to avoid drawing attention to any attractiveness she might be in possession of during the ceremony. Her baby sister, Narcissa, has been clad to match, and looks ready to kill. Her mother and her aunt Walburga immediately swarmed over the pair the second the clothes were on to powder and paint until they looked like nothing so much as a pair of very uncomfortable china dolls. Meanwhile, her older sister, Bellatrix, soon to be Mrs. Rodolphus Lestrange, has prowled the entire length of the room in her underclothes, painting and powdering herself while Aunt Walburga trails hopelessly behind, trying to make Bellatrix's thick black hair conform to some bridal coif. The hair is putting up quite a good fight to stay well out of it.

The room the five women are currently occupying is painfully humid from the downpour of April showers that have been relentlessly pounding the house since dawn. Half the reason for the repeated powderings has been an effort to combat the perspiration they've been avidly collecting in not so much hankies as buckets. It's doing nothing to improve the bride-to-be's temper.

"Mistress," Kreacher breathes reverently as he enters the room, his small arms wrapped awkwardly around the enormous box, "I have brought it." Bella immediately whirls about to face him, hurriedly prying off the lid and gasping (in disgust or delight, Andromeda isn't certain, but she knows if it was her, it'd be the former) at the first sight of the family wedding gown.

Ah, the gown. The bane of the existence of every bride in the family since the days of Vulpecula Black, who had the thing commissioned in the first place. She wore the cursed thing herself some five hundred years previously and created the tradition of wearing it. Andromeda is sure, given her ancestry, that it was the height of fashion at the time, but in the twentieth century, it leaves something to be desired. The gown is a monstrosity of slightly yellowed ivory, constructed out of several yards of silk, lace and itchy yarn-dried taffeta, weighed down with gratuitous poundage of wooden hoop and whalebone corsetry, with enough frills, embroidery and general foofaraw to satisfy several brides. Its many layers bear scars from the attempts of several Black family brides in the intervening generations to update it somehow--generally by shortening, lengthening, or adding distracting decorations, like silk ribbons and floral buds Charmed to retain their freshness forever. That's them outsmarted, though, Andromeda thinks. It's well-known family lore by now that Vulpecula, mortified by her daughter's wish to make changes to the dress, had put a sort of backhanded curse on it: the only alterations that'll stick are ones that actually make it look worse.

Once on Bellatrix, it transforms her into a gargantuan, humanoid doppelganger of her wedding cake. Andromeda reflects momentarily on how worth it being disowned and blasted off the tapestry might be if it meant she herself would never have to be clothed in this torturous nightmare of pure-blood tradition.

Aunt Walburga gasps rapturously and clasps her hands to her ample bosom, crying out, "Bella, you're breathtaking! Radiant! Druella, isn't she radiant?"

Their mother's eyes well with tears as she weakly nods and lies impressively, "Oh, my darling, you're so lovely."

Bellatrix's face glows with smug hauteur, satisfied that she's managed to shine even under the influence of the dress, and she spins around to face her sisters. "Isn't it wonderful? Romi, Cissy?" Her smile pulls wider at the corners into an expression best described as "vaguely nasty." "Don't you just wish it were you?"

Narcissa's expression twists to match as she replies, with perfect dignity, "It suits you, Bella. I can only hope I wear it so well when it is my turn."

All the women in the room turn to Andromeda expectantly at this, and--not being as adept a liar as everyone else in her immediate family--she struggles for something to say. "Bella, I wouldn't dream of taking it away from you." In theory, it's a compliment. It does well enough, anyway, as Bella continues looking smug and neither Aunt Walburga nor Mum reproaches her. Still, they seem to expect more, which is why she smiles brightly at them and says, "I'll just fetch the bouquet, shall I? So you get a view of the whole picture." Without waiting for a response, she runs for her life, down the stairs and into the parlor.

In the hours it's been since she went upstairs to dress her sister, the family house seems to have exploded within a flower shop. The house elves of many different family members are hard at work, covering every available surface in pale pink sweetheart roses and white crêpe. All of the mounted heads of their ancestors have been crowned with wreathes and veils made of the damn things, so that they might appear to look favorably on the occasion. Andromeda shakes her head, sparing a moment of pity for her relations that call this place "home," who are going to have to live with the frilly, foolish things for a few days before all the guests depart.

The sheer number of guests is mind-boggling in itself. More and more seem to be trickling in by the second, many of them cousins Andromeda can't remember seeing since she was very small. Still, she manages to privately feel quite pleased with herself for being able to put names to most of them: old Charis Crouch, who once blistered Andromeda's bottom when she was seven for throwing scrambled eggs at Charis' daughter, Lacerta; Lacerta herself, grown so homely now that the only escort she was able to dig up for these festivities is obviously a Crouch cousin--he's got the nose and that blatantly humorless air about him that distinguishes half his family; Evan Rosier, a first cousin on Mum's side that's grated Andromeda's nerves since childhood; the elder Prewett cousins, they're all right, Andromeda wonders why on Earth they came; Aunt Walburga's younger son, Regulus, his Hogwarts trunk in tow and his dress robes drawn so neatly, they're clearly strangling him; and bringing up the rear behind him--

"Sirius!" Andromeda shrieks in surprised delight, as her favorite of her cousins enters and promptly drops his trunk into a passing house elf, smashing a healthy dozen teacups it happens to be bearing on a tray for the kitchen.

"'Dromeda!" He yells back jovially, hopping over the broken glass and patently ignoring the shocked and angry murmurs of the other guests around him as he clasps her by the hands and happily swings her around.

"My goodness, I can hardly believe you're here! It's Bellatrix's wedding, I wouldn't think she'd have invited you--"

"She didn't." Regulus cuts in, looking sulky.

"I'm his plus one." Sirius explains with a broad, handsome grin before shooting a scathing look at his younger brother. "Oh, stop whinging, Reg; it's not as if a _girl_ would've willingly come with you."

"Are we gate-crashing, then?" Andromeda says, beaming much against her will. It's her sister's wedding and by all rights, she should be chucking him back out the door, but it's hard to contemplate such a thing with Sirius beaming right back at her like a co-conspirator.

He puts on a look of tragically-wounded innocence and cries in mock despair, "'Dromeda, I am hurt--I am _wounded_\--that you'd suggest such a thing! I'm _family,_ I'm _blood_\--I'm Reg's plus one!"

Andromeda gives him a shrewd, knowing look. "Clever way to get past the wards they've put up to keep out the uninvited." Sirius' expression reflects the opinion that she has just paid him an enormous compliment, a fact that makes it very difficult to do anything other than laugh and squeeze his hands. "Oh...on your own head be it, you bloody great pillock."

If anything, his smile grows brighter. "Go on, then, 'Dromeda. Give us a kiss. I can tell you're dying for it."

"Oh, yes, perishing--simply pining away like a fairy-tale damsel." She replies through barely-concealed giggling, even as she complies with his request. "Bella's going to do her nut when she finds out you're here, you know." She murmurs against his cheek.

"Andromeda," He says, in complete earnestness, "that is entirely the reason I've come."

\--

"What?!" Bellatrix screams, jumping to her feet and nearly tripping over the dress as she stares, white-faced and furious, at Andromeda.

Predictably, the news of Sirius' arrival is not sitting well with the future Mrs. Lestrange. Andromeda inwardly sighs.

"Oh, Bella, I know he's a nuisance, but he _is_ family." Andromeda says in a reasonable tone of voice.

"Family?!" Bella shrieks. "Family?!" Kreacher quails away from her to huddle in Aunt Walburga's skirts--a mistake, in Andromeda's opinion, as her aunt looks only slightly less upset than Bellatrix does. Narcissa and Mum have identical expressions of cool, suppressed rage. Bellatrix waddles menacingly towards Andromeda, clutching at her train to keep from tripping over it further, before leaning angrily into Andromeda's face. "I forewent the possibility of a June ceremony so that I could be married while he was at Hogwarts! So that I wouldn't have to endure that--that--beastly Gryffindor hellion!"

"That's why he's here." Andromeda patiently reminds her. "If you'd only sent him an invitation of his own--"

Bellatrix sneers at her. "Oh, yes, invite the little beast, might as well ask him straight away to put flobberworms down my dress--"

"--if you had invited him in his own right, you know he wouldn't have come. But you didn't, and now he's come along with Regulus to make you sorry for it." Andromeda's voice is astoundingly calm, which is perhaps the only reason Bellatrix hasn't yet slapped her.

As it is, Bellatrix ruins her hairstyle for the third time by grasping the locks at her temples and tugging at them in impotent anger. "He's going to ruin my wedding!"

"Oh, come now, Bella." Mum says soothingly, putting gentle hands on Bellatrix's arms, only to have them thrown off in disgust within seconds. "You're getting married today, Sirius or no Sirius. I won't have you upsetting yourself."

"But he's going to ruin everything!" Bellatrix persists desperately.

"No, he won't." Narcissa interjects coolly, her cadence a perfect imitation of Andromeda's own calm. "Romi will look after the pest and keep him out of trouble. Won't you, Romi?"

Once more, all eyes in the room lit on her. Andromeda stammers, "Well, I--that is--"

"Of course." Mum says, her voice brimming with approval. "That's a splendid idea, Cissy. Well done."

"Oh, but--" Andromeda starts to argue. It's not that she doesn't like Sirius; she adores him, always has. It's just that the thought of making Sirius behave himself at an important family function he came home specifically to disrupt sounds about as pleasant to Andromeda as quaffing an entire bottle of Skele-Gro.

"He likes you." Mum cuts her off ruthlessly. "You're the only one he ever listened to."

"Indeed." Aunt Walburga says with an expression of disgust. "I ought to have strangled the boy at birth and saved us all some trouble. He's made a career of disobeying his father and me."

"But he'll listen to Romi!" Bellatrix cries in triumph, grasping Andromeda's shoulders and giving her a look of such desperation that Andromeda begins to feel guilty. "Romi, it's my wedding day--please!"

The "please" unhinges her. Andromeda can't recall the last time Bellatrix said "please" for anything.

"Oh, all right." Andromeda sighs, smiling a little despite herself as Bellatrix hugs her. If nothing else, she's made her older sister happy.

The amount of confidence they had in her was deeply unsettling, as normalcy was restored instantly. Aunt Walburga was back to fixing Bella's hair while Mum turns to Andromeda and Narcissa with several small, neatly stripped flowers. Andromeda bites her tongue to keep from complaining while the spectacularly itchy buds are woven into her tresses, but Narcissa hardly even seems to notice when the same treatment is visited upon her. Andromeda sends her a jealous, resentful look that she responds to with nothing more than a dignified smile.

More make-up, more powder, and then Andromeda hears the sentence from her mother that she's been dreading: "All right! I think we can all go downstairs now."

\--

After the ceremony, Sirius takes Andromeda by the hand and drags her away from the reception, stealing an entire bottle of champagne off the buffet table as they pass. He pulls her along through the empty house, up into the attic and then out the little window on one side, taking her with him up onto the roof.

"Aren't you worried we'll fall?" Andromeda asks as he uncorks the bottle, spraying a good portion of its contents down into Aunt Walburga's rose bushes and laughing as someone--possibly Regulus--yelps at the downpour.

"No." He says confidently, handing her the bottle. "If we do, you'll just grab onto me and Apparate us right back. Sounds fun, really."

Andromeda takes a healthy pull from the bottle and hands it back to him with a smile. "Always a plan."

"It's my curse." Sirius confides in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. He lays back on the roof, pillowing his head on his arm and gesturing for her to do the same. Andromeda rolls her eyes but does so, her side pressing lightly into his as she does. She starts to scoot over, but before she can, his arm is behind her, supporting her neck, one hand companionably upon her shoulder. She lets it pass, settling into the position.

A few minutes pass in comfortable silence as they stare up at the night sky, passing the champagne between them, before Sirius' brow furrows and he asks, "Which one's mine?"

Andromeda starts, then turns to frown at him. "Don't you know? But your mum says you're tops in your year at Astronomy."

Sirius gives her a contemptuous snort. "Like that's an achievement. I just look my charts, then close my eyes and picture the seating arrangements at my birthday teas."

Andromeda winces slightly at his bitter reminder of her aunt's abysmal sense of humor. The seating arrangements at Sirius-related functions always _are_ loosely based on the astronomical position of the stars and constellations most of the guests tend to be named after. She suspects Aunt Walburga does it because it usually puts a good bit of distance between her sons.

Andromeda stares up in concentration for a moment before pointing in the right direction. "There. That's you. Sirius, the dog star. Brightest in the whole sky. You can see it from just about everywhere in the world. Even in the daytime, under the right conditions." Andromeda turns her head towards him and grins. "So that's you named right, isn't it?"

Sirius looks completely dumbstruck, as if he's just been caught putting Narcissa's underwear on the cat. "What--because it's a dog?"

Andromeda's sure there's more to this question than she's catching, but she lets it pass. "No. Because it's always forcing itself to be visible."

Sirius deflates a little, looking moody. He swigs down another few gulps of champagne. Andromeda feels a twinge of nameless guilt, and adds, quieter, "It's the brightest."

Sirius turns his head to look at her, silently contemplating her face. He offers her the bottle, but she pushes it away. His hand on her shoulder tightens, then seems to come alive, alternating between massaging circles into her neck and plucking bits of baby's breath out of her hair. Something about his fingers against her skin reminds Andromeda that how much trouble Sirius gets into with girls at Hogwarts is fast becoming a family joke. She gets only a second to think about this before he's kissing her.

His lips on hers feel warm and oddly soft for a boy's. The taste of champagne clings to his tongue as it eases its way into her mouth. She puts her hand to his cheek as they kiss, feeling at the tiny prickles of promising beard stubble, before sliding her fingers up into his hair. He moans into her mouth as her hand clenches into a fist at the roots, tugging him insistently towards her. His free hand clasps her hard on the waist before it rakes over her body with practiced ease. His fingers at her breast are light and deft, movements meant to tease her into passion, rather than grasp and pull, as other men have done.

It's all painfully, mind-numbingly pleasant until she feels his hand tugging up the hem of her dress robes and sliding up the length of her bare leg. His fingers clenched on her thigh, one of them just beginning to slip beneath the lace of her panties, bring her crashing back to Earth and all the facts come slamming into the forefront of her brain: she is twenty-two, he is not quite sixteen, and they are _cousins._ No matter how tall and handsome he grows, Sirius will always be the little boy she once conspired with to hide toads in Bellatrix's bed.

"That's enough now." She whispers, catching his hand before it can go any further. "That's too much."

Sirius pulls back to look at her and his eyes are darker than she's ever seen them, clouded by the kind of scorned passion that can only be found in the very young. "Run away with me." He whispers with reckless abandon.

"What?" Andromeda asks incredulously, sitting up and pushing her robes back down. "Don't joke about that."

"I'm not." He says, raking his hair out his eyes with a shaking hand. "I've had enough. I don't ever want to come back here again, 'Dromeda. I _hate_ this place." He means it. She can tell he means it. Sirius has always been impulsive and has never fit in with their kin. He would run off without so much as a look back, if he could find a way to do it without ending up alone. "Run off with me. It'd be the biggest laugh we ever had on them. We can head off to...France; America. I don't care, wherever you like. We can get a little flat. I'll be a cursebreaker at Gringotts and you can do whatever you want. Start a band or--or study the stars. I'll let you fold all my socks until they're smaller than Knuts, if you still fancy things being that neat."

It's a mark of how strong their bond is that Andromeda is neither amused nor offended by this. "Sirius...we can't. You know we can't."

"Why not?" He asks, looking for all the world like a child that's been told there's not really a Father Christmas.

Andromeda clasps one of his hands and brushes a strand of black hair out of his eyes. "Because I don't care that much about your socks and I don't fancy being the mother of a child named Little Dipper Black." Even while caught in the storm of teenaged rejection, Sirius manages to laugh when she says it. Feeling that she's moving into safer ground, Andromeda smiles ruefully at him. "It'd be fun for a month, but then I'd make you miserable. We'd _both_ be miserable."

Sirius shakes his head in denial, leans forward and tries to kiss her again. Andromeda turns her head away to deny him access, but doesn't pull back when he ends up resting his face in her neck instead. How wonderful it would've been, she thinks with momentary regret, to be young and stupid enough to elope with Sirius Black.

They sit in silence again for a long time, holding hands as he continues to lay against her shoulder. After several quiet moments, he finally rights himself, sitting back and straightening his collar. He smiles slightly at her and says, "Of course you're right. You always are." Andromeda smiles.

"Let's go back down and have dance." She says, by way of offering a distraction.

It works. Sirius grins at her, stands up and pulls her to her feet beside him. They head back down to the reception, which is still going strong. Uncle Orion is hard at work with his wand, trying to get champagne out of Regulus' robes before Bellatrix or Aunt Walburga notices his bedraggled state. The sight makes Sirius laugh out loud.

"Come on then, 'Dromeda. This song's not bad." Sirius yells to her over the music, dragging her by her hands again out to the dance floor beneath the pavilion.

As they dance, Andromeda smiles and thinks to herself that she wants to remember Sirius this way forever: not quite sixteen, slightly drunk and whirling her all over the place, laughing and laughing.


End file.
